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It’s good work if you can get it

How much could a person usually haul in after a mere four months on the job followed by resignation in disgrace? How about … $56,000 a day, every day, including weekends and vacation days:

(CNN) — It’s official: Scott Thompson “resigned” from his post as Yahoo CEO’s in the wake of his resume-embellishing scandal, and he’ll receive no severance.

But Thompson scored a nice chunk of change as a parting gift. Under the terms of his contract, Yahoo could have required him to give back $7 million of the cash and stock he received after taking the helm in January.

That’s the harsh reality of life for the zero-point zero zero one percent. And no severance! The horror, oh sweet Jesus, the horror. Scott Thompson must be crying like a baby all the way to the offshore bank …

Yeah, a little over a decade ago the multinational I work at had a CEO that fucked up the whole works, got canned after a few years, and walked away with an absolute obscene amount of money (he did get severance). This was after, on his watch, the Mexican division of the company pulled an Enron before Enron made it cool, i.e. sketchy semi-fraudulent accounting practices to artificially inflate profits while hiding losses. We set the record at the time for largest SEC fine ever! Go us!

In fact, while it’s by no means monotonic, there does seem to be a trend where, as you’re percent-number declines, you get paid more for doing less. I know I work a helluva lot less hard (and have a helluva lot more freedom to work when and how I choose) than some of my friends who make a half or even a third as much money. I feel bad about it sometimes, but as they say: “Good work if you can get it”…